World Cup: Vuvuzela noise generating concerns in South Africa Special

The vuvezela, a plastic horn blown at football matches in South Africa, produces a lot of noise and some players have blamed it for their teams’ poor performances at World Cup matches.

Loud and proud, the vuvezala is South Africa soccer's trademark trumpet, described as a beautiful noise for the beautiful game.

“Describing the atmosphere in a stadium packed with thousands of fans blowing their vuvuzelas is difficult. Up close it's an elephant, sure, but en masse the sound is more like a massive swarm of very angry bees,” writes South Africa’s website for tourists.

It added: “And when there's action near the goal mouth, those bees go really crazy.”

The captain of the French team, Patrice Evra, voiced is concern about the high-pitched horn and said the noise did contribute to their poor showing against their first match with Uruguay.

''We can't sleep at night because of the vuvuzelas. People start playing them from 6 am. We can't hear one another out on the pitch because of them." Evra said as quoted on BBC website.

The French captain view is supported by Collins Atohengbe, a Voice of Nigeria correspondent in South Africa.

"The fact is that the vuvuzela is definitely very noisy and it is causing a lot of frenzy amongst even a number of spectators and one of the remarks made by the commentators during Nigeria's Argentine match was that the vuvuzela must have been responsible for instance why Obafemi(Nigeria's Super Eagles forward) did not hear Odenwigie(another forward) calling for the ball instead of giving it to Uche," said Atohengbe.

Already as at the time of filing in this story, over 69,000 thousand people have signed on to an anti-vuvuzella group on Facebook, calling on FIFA to ban the instrument.

Caleb Menges a member of the fast growing group posted: "Vuvuzelas are stopping fans from participating in the games, they aren't able to cheer their teams on, inspire them and be the 12th man. There is no atmosphere in the stadiums, just a monotonous sound. Any true fan should join in the calling of banning them from all stadiums."

But would FIFA ban vuvuzela from the stadium?

Atohengbe, Nigeria's senior correspondent in SA, said: ''The average South African loves the Vuvuzela. That's a symbol...and particularly also, is a source of finance for those who own shops and sell vuvuzela and the producers themselves would not like to stop it."

Sparky Mark is an English sports journalist cum broadcaster who works for Radio 2 in Abu Dhabi, UAE. He is due in South Africa on Wednesday, his first time in the Southern African country.

"I want to be in a stadium to hear what they (vuvuzelas) sound like," said an apparently excited Sparky who had only heard the vuvuzela via TV and seen them in his office.